Traditional protection schemes in telecommunications systems provide a subset of standby or inactive resources for a subset of active resources. These schemes are often called 1:1 where there is one standby resource for every active resource, 1:N where there is one standby resource for every N active resources, and M:N where there are M standby resource for every N active resources. In these systems, only the active resources are used to process or provide services to communication sessions such as VoIP calls. Because of the redundancy required for these protection schemes, they are costly to implement. Further, when a failure occurs, switchover of a large number of communication sessions from a failed resource to a protection resource often causes long delays and subsequent degradation of service.